Look, the media fanfare is a fucking joke.  It's typical dramatic graphics, and music, and "special breaking urgent reports".  It's like Hurricane coverage.  Obviously, things are being overly dramatized in order to move people to buy newspapers, watch cable news networks, and check cnn.com every 10 minutes.  But, that doesn't mean that some fear/caution aren't warranted.  We're not talking ebola here, but it's still nothing to absolutely write off as complete bullshit, and when it's in your face and it's affecting your daily routine, it's a lot more salient an issue.